Teachers use movement to keep fidgeting students alert in classroom

Mark Bugnaski | Kalamazoo GazetteRodin St. Arnauld, left, and Heather Moore, are teachers at Moorsbridge Elementary that are using fidget tools to help students concentrate in the classroom. Both believe that students are become more in need of physical activity and sensory integration to be able to learn.

PORTAGE -- Students at Moorsbridge Elementary School can chew gum during class.

They can stand during lessons, stretch putty while working out math problems, squeeze small, squishy balls while reading.

And it helps them learn.

Rather than confine students to their desks, preaching to them to keep their hands and feet still, some teachers at the Portage elementary school use the children's natural tendencies to fidget to help them students focus, concentrate and learn.

"If you need to stand to learn, you stand to learn. If you need to squeeze the ball, you squeeze the ball," said Robin St. Arnauld, a third-grade teacher at Moorsbridge. "They need to be able to move to get their work done."

St. Arnauld started incorporating movement into her classroom about seven years ago. Simple movement, she said, grounds the brain. Without it, students' minds wander, and they lose focus.

John Kilbourne studies the connection between movement and education at Grand Valley State University in Allendale. In 2008, he had a class of his university students sit on exercise balls during class to see if the slight movements required to maintain balance on the balls stimulated learning.

After the 14-week course, students reported that the exercise balls helped them to better pay attention, concentrate, take notes, engage in discussions and take exams. His research, published in the February issue of The Chronicle of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education, includes references to studies by Harvard professor John J. Rately and Bob Nellis of the Mayo Clinic concluding that movement in the classroom stimulates the brain and allows it to better take in and process new information.

"I think there is a growing body of research that supports that there is a link between moving and learning," Kilbourne said. "We did not evolve to sit in chairs all day. We are moving beings."

More pent-up energy

Heather Moore, a special-education teacher at Moorsbridge, said that in the last 10 years she has observed that more students are having trouble sitting still in their chairs. Students who sit three-to-a-seat on crowded buses instead of walking to school and play video games instead of running around outside come to school full of energy, she said.

"As I started to see the classroom dynamics changing, we had to do something to meet the needs of these kids that were moving and that were constantly moving," Moore said. "And to just tell them to stop moving, it wasn't working. ... I tell my kids it's OK to move."

Moore said sometimes there is a need for major movement, such as pressing against walls, running outside or carrying a load of books down the hallway, to raise or lower students' energy levels.

Other times students need small movements to help them concentrate. St. Arnauld said that without stimulation from movement, the brain shuts down every 20 minutes. Students can sit on exercise balls, bounce their feet against rubber bands looped around the legs of their chairs, chew gum, suck on peppermints or use "fidgets."

Mark Bugnaski | Kalamazoo GazetteRodin St. Arnauld and Heather Moore at Moorsbridge Elementary are also incorporating ball chairs to assist students to concentrate in the classroom. Both believe that students are become more in need of physical activity and sensory integration to be able to learn.

Some fidgets look like toys -- soft balls for squeezing or rubber balls covered in elastic string to keep fingers busy below the desk. Other fidgets can be smooth stones that students rub between their fingers or mounds of putty to stretch.

But fidgets are not toys, emphasized St. Arnauld and Moore. They are tools.

"We use everything you can think of. It can be a piece of material. It can be string. It can be a ball that you grip and squeeze," St. Arnauld said. "This is a minuscule way of getting movement. If you're squeezing a ball in your hand or chewing gum in your mouth, it helps your brain get movement."

Emma said that the ball also helps her get through math problems, especially multiplication. Emma's mother and St. Arnauld noticed that the ball calmed her nerves as well, another benefit of fidgets.

Easing anxiety

With the increase in fidgeting students, both St. Arnauld and Moore said they have seen more anxiety issues among young elementary students. Tests scare students to the point of poor performance. New social situations terrify students to tears. All this before the onslaught of emotions associated with puberty.

Moore had one student who would come into her room and immediately grab a container of putty.

"He'd pull on it and pull on it and get all his frustrations out," she said.

Smooth rocks can also help, she said. She encourages students to keep them in their pockets and rub them whenever they get nervous or anxious.

Fidgets do not work for every student, and not every teacher embraces them, but Nancy Haas, principal at Moorsbridge Elementary School, is willing to give them a try. "Anything that is going to help a child, I am open to," she said.